Lebanon and Israel agreed late on Friday to extend their ceasefire by 45 days after talks between the two delegations at the US State Department, but Israeli strikes continued across southern Lebanon hours after the announcement.
At least six people, including three first responders, were killed and 22 wounded after a Civil Defence centre in Hanouiyeh, in the Tyre district, was struck overnight. Additional strikes were reported in southern areas after the Israeli military issued new displacement warnings.
The Israeli army issued forced displacement orders overnight and again on Saturday morning, telling residents of nine southern villages to “immediately evacuate your homes and move away from the villages and towns by a distance of at least 1,000 metres to open areas”, according to a post on X by the army’s Arabic-language spokesman. Strikes followed in the targeted areas.
More than 670 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since the ceasefire was first announced last month, according to Lebanese authorities.
In Nabatieh, a city long considered a Hezbollah stronghold, very little remains. The streets are empty, and the only sounds breaking the silence are the buzzing of Israeli drones overhead and the echo of strikes reverberating through the mountainous region.
Chafic Fourani, director of Nabatieh Governmental Hospital, said life has changed little since the ceasefire took effect.
“The morgue is full. Twelve bodies have arrived in the past few days,” he told The National. “We haven’t felt a difference.”
The same exhaustion echoes through the medical staff still working in Nabatieh. Mohammad Khayat, a rescuer, drives his ambulance to the scene of every Israeli strike despite the risks.
“There are strikes every single day. There were attacks only one kilometre from here. The ceasefire? It exists on paper only.”
Israel has increasingly been accused by Lebanese officials and rescue workers of carrying out “double-tap” and “triple-tap” strikes, in which the same location is targeted repeatedly, often after rescuers and civilians have gathered at the scene.
More than 105 emergency workers and rescuers have been killed since the war began on March 2, after Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Friday, Mr Khayat was only metres away from a double-tap strike targeting people gathered near a humanitarian aid distribution point run by the Red Cross and Caritas. His ambulance was damaged.
“We are continuing to do our job exactly as if we were in wartime,” he said.
Mr Khayat and his team have lost colleagues both during the war and after the ceasefire took effect. On Tuesday, two rescuers were killed while attempting to evacuate a man wounded in an Israeli strike.
'Ink on paper'
Only a handful of residents remain in Nabatieh, while many others have yet to return. Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble, and the shops that once lined the city’s streets remain shuttered.
According to Karim Emile Bitar, professor at Saint Joseph University of Beirut, the ceasefire “is completely meaningless and detached from the reality on the ground”.
Despite direct talks between the two countries – a first in decades – Mr Bitar said the agreement “remains ink on paper”.
“It is violated daily, hundreds of civilians have died, and it seems to be an Israeli strategy aimed at buying time and helping Donald Trump in his communication strategy so that he can claim serious negotiations are under way,” he told The National.
Yet, according to the analyst, “for these negotiations to be fruitful, first of all, we would need a genuine ceasefire that Israel would respect and an Israeli commitment to withdraw from Lebanese territory”.
Israel continues to hold positions in southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on April 16, when the initial ceasefire was signed, that Israeli troops would remain in what he described as “an expanded security zone” in the south of the country.
For the ceasefire to hold, what is most needed is “support for the Lebanese Armed Forces, so it can carry on its mission assigned by the Lebanese state to establish sovereignty across the entire territory and proceed with the disarmament of all non-state actors”, Mr Bitar added.
